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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
I was shown the life of Brother B in his family. Angels wept as
they viewed his course at home, as they viewed the unloved wife, who
receives no respect from him whose duty it is to love and cherish her
as his own body, even as Christ has loved and cherished the church.
He takes pains to make her defects apparent and to exalt his own
wisdom and judgment and to make her feel her inferiority in company
and alone. Notwithstanding she is illiterate, her spirit is far more
acceptable to God than the spirit of her husband. God looks upon
Sister B with feelings of the deepest pity. She lives out the principles
of truth, as far as she has light, much better than her husband. She will
not be answerable for the light and knowledge that her husband has
had but which she has not had. He could be a light and comfort and
blessing to her, but his influence is used in a wrong way. He reads to
her what he pleases, that which will give strength to his views and his
ideas, while he keeps back essential light which he does not want her
to hear.
He does not respect his wife, and he allows his children to show
her disrespect. Like Eli’s sons, these children are left to come up. They
are not restrained, and all this neglect will by and by rebound upon
himself. That which Brother B is now sowing he will most assuredly
reap. Sister B, in many respects, is nearer the kingdom of heaven than
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her husband. These unruly, disobedient children, that are not educated
to self-control, will plant thorns in the hearts of their parents that they
cannot prevent; and then in the judgment God will call the parents to
account for bringing children into the world and letting them come up
untrained, unloving, and unloved. These children cannot be saved in
the kingdom of heaven without a great change in their characters.
Brother B seeks to have his wife believe as he believes, and he
would have her think that all he does is right and that he knows more
than any of the ministers and is wise above all men. I was shown that in
his boasted wisdom he is dealing with the bodies of his children as he
is with the soul of his wife. He has been following a course according
to his own wisdom, which is ruining the health of his child. He flatters
himself that the poison which he has introduced into her system keeps
her alive. What a mistake! He should reason how much better she
might have been had he let her alone and not abused nature. This child
can never have a sound constitution, for her bones and the current of
blood in her veins have been poisoned. The shattered constitutions of